“Can there? Ah! my good Cartoner, you are a fool—the very best sort of fool—and yet, in the matter of intellect, you are as superior to me as I am superior to you . . . in swordsmanship.”
And he made another pass into thin air with his stick.
“I should like to fight some one to-night,” he said. “Some one of the very first order. I feel in the vein. I could do great things to-night—and the angels in heaven are talking of me.”
In his light-hearted way he bared his head and looked up to the sky. But there was a deeper ring in his voice. It almost seemed as if he were sincere.
As he stood there, bareheaded, with his coat open and his shirt gleaming in the moonlight, a carriage rattled past, and stopped immediately behind them. The door was opened from within, and the only occupant, alighting quickly, came towards them.
“There is only one man in Warsaw who would apostrophize the gods like that,” he said. The speaker was Prince Martin Bukaty.
He recognized Cartoner at this moment.
“You!” he said, and there was a sharp note in his voice. “You, Cartoner! What are you doing in the streets at this time of night?”
“We have been dining with Mangles,” explained Deulin.
“And we do not quite know what we are doing, or where we are going,” added Cartoner. “But we think we are going home.”